Talk:Fire dragon breath
Item property I added the note on hit dice for items because someone reading the description might not know that this is the same property usable on items (including a standard Bioware item), and not just the creature special ability. - MrZork 00:12, June 26, 2011 (UTC) * The sash of searing is not a standard item; it is a (BioWare) custom item from HotU chapter 3. Anyway, is your target audience builders or players? For players, it might be better to drop the note from the builder's section (since they would likely ignore that section) and change the existing general note to "The "dragon's age" is determined by the hit dice of the user of this ability (often, but not necessarily, a dragon)." to de-emphasize the link to dragons. Or, for builders, make that change, but instead of dropping the builder's note, change it to "This ability is available as a "cast spell" item property." (And whatever is done here should probably be copied to the other dragon breaths that are available as "cast spell" item properties.) --The Krit 18:54, June 26, 2011 (UTC) :* Good points. I was conflating "standard Bioware item" with "item from one of the main Bioware compaigns". I thought the note would be of interest to both players and builders: Players might want to know about the actual power of the item they are likely to find and builders might want to note that the dragon breath is somewhat unusual for an item property in that its power scales with user level, which is an interesting consideration. I will attempt what you suggested and put the note in the earlier section. I thought about changing the entries for the other dragon breath properties, but wasn't sure it would be as relevant because players would not be as likely to encounter them. But, it makes sense to have the parallel entries there for players who run across such items in other modules and builders making other custom items. - MrZork 04:43, June 27, 2011 (UTC) ::* The parenthetical sentence you added seems rather wordy to me. Maybe "The 'dragon's age' is determined by the hit dice of the creature using the ability (including creatures using this ability from an item). Ages, damage, and saving throw DCs are given on the following chart." instead? --The Krit 19:10, June 28, 2011 (UTC) :::* Yup. Now that I look at it with fresh eyes, it's both wordy and still not as useful to players. Maybe it would be best to keep the first sentence the same, since builders will understand that hit dice determines damage and DC for any creature. And then the parenthetical note could be aimed at players and just make it clear that the damage and DC from any item they find with the property will be based on their level. So, the whole note would read :::::The "dragon's age" is determined by the number of hit dice of the creature using the ability. (For characters using items with this property, their character level is used.) '' ::::Hopefully, that will make how things work clear to players and builders reading the page. :::: Then, since what constitutes "dragon age" is a slightly different topic from the damage and save DC info itself, the actual data about those things can be in its own note along with the chart. I think that will be clearer than one long note covering two things. ::::I am going to make the change above along with swapping the chart column order and keeping to your suggestion of using bullets (and there will be more than one note now anyway.) I'll leave the change here for Fire dragon breath for a day or so to see if there are further suggestions. Then I will do the same for the other dragon breath pages. - MrZork 12:32, June 30, 2011 (UTC) ::::*Done - MrZork 08:44, July 2, 2011 (UTC) ::::* Sorry for taking a while to get back to this. The thing I don't like about the above is that it implies that character level and number of hit dice are different somehow. I'm going to throw in a change (just in this article for now) to see if it works better. --The Krit 18:34, July 18, 2011 (UTC) :::::* I like that change. It gets around the implication that "character level" is anything other than another name for "hit dice" when talking about characters. - MrZork 22:47, July 18, 2011 (UTC) ::::::* The downside is that it no longer explicitly mentions the item property. Do you think that's OK? --The Krit 02:10, July 19, 2011 (UTC) :::::::* Shoot. I forgot that making item use more clear for players was part of the reason for the other wording. What about ''The "dragon's age" is determined by the number of hit dice (a.k.a. character levels) of the creature activating the dragon breath. ? I think avoiding the word "ability" should prevent players from wondering if the statement applies only to creature abilities. Even more explicit (though less tidy) might be ... of the creature or character activating ... but it would probably be better to avoid implying that characters aren't creatures... - MrZork 13:09, July 19, 2011 (UTC) ::::::::* How about keep The Krit's change and then make a subcategory for the spells category which will list the spells available for item casting that are not part of a spell book. Something like item (only) spell. This would include the greater ability bonus spells as well as dragon breaths. WhiZard 20:25, July 19, 2011 (UTC) :::::::::* I don't quite follow. A list of non-spellbook spells may be a good idea, but I'm not sure it helps clarify how this property works as an item property for characters. It seems like that clarification should go in this article. - MrZork 20:59, July 19, 2011 (UTC) ::::::::::*Okay. I had assumed the gist was more to validate that this could be used as an item cast spell, rather than defining hit die for player characters. I guess I just assumed that when a person who saw the description would be able to quickly figure out the meaning for item casting by following the hit die link. All they would need to see was validation that item casting was supported to know no weird difference (like a default value of 0) would occur. However, if it felt that word choice might make the critical difference, go ahead. I guess I'll be looking into that subcategory in the mean time. WhiZard 23:07, July 19, 2011 (UTC) ::::::::* I like the idea of changing "using the ability" to "activating the dragon breath". --The Krit 21:39, July 19, 2011 (UTC) Column order I wonder if the chart would be more clear if the columns were ordered with Hit Dice first? That way, people would be less likely to read chart as presenting Age as the independent variable for looking up damage and save DC... - MrZork 04:43, June 27, 2011 (UTC) * Possibly. If the columns are re-ordered, I might even rephrase the note's "is determined by" as "is based on" to draw a parallel to the ability description. --The Krit 19:10, June 28, 2011 (UTC) :* If such a change is made the shifter varieties would likely need to correspond.WhiZard 20:24, June 28, 2011 (UTC) ::* If folks are okay with the change to the fire dragon breath page here, I can swap the columns on the shifter pages as well. (I just wrote a script to do it.) - MrZork 12:32, June 30, 2011 (UTC) :::* Done - MrZork 08:44, July 2, 2011 (UTC) Style question BTW, as a style question, should the Notes entries be bulleted if there is only one of them? I just noticed that the note entry is not bulleted for fire breath, but it is for acid, cold, and lightning breath. I am going with unbulleted for now, since there's just the one note. Sorry if I missed something in the style guide. - MrZork 04:51, June 27, 2011 (UTC) * I do not recall that being decided anywhere. My tendency would be to always use bullets to make it simpler for others adding or deleting notes, particularly someone new to NWNWiki. (Someone new might not think to use bullets if adding a second note and the only existing note did not have a bullet.) Plus, the "wikitable" format is intended to be left-aligned with the text of a bullet point, making it visually fit in with the point preceding it. --The Krit 19:10, June 28, 2011 (UTC)